Dear Reader,

When Richard and I visited a small church in Buenos Aires back in early August, there was a confessional roped off like a museum exhibit, with prayers and photographs and handwritten notes scattered around it.

We'd gone there on purpose. I knew the story behind that particular confessional, and I wanted to see it for myself.

But knowing a story and standing inside it turned out to be two very different things. Nothing about that booth looked remarkable. If I hadn't known what happened there, I would have walked right past it.

I’m writing this now on my birthday, weeks after that trip, and I keep thinking about how many ordinary-looking moments in life may actually be the beginning of something we can’t see yet.

Now let's get ALIGNED...

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Inspirational Quote

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The Story

When Richard and I got to Buenos Aires, there was one part of the trip I was especially curious about. Pope Francis had spent most of his life there before the world knew him as Pope Francis, and I wanted to see some of the places that had shaped him.

We went to Mass at the Catedral Metropolitana, where he'd served as Archbishop long before anyone knew his name. That was moving in its own way. But it was a different church, the Basílica de San José de Flores, that stayed with me.

When Jorge Bergoglio was almost seventeen years old, he was on his way to meet some friends when he passed the church and decided to go inside. There he encountered a priest he didn't know and felt the need to go to confession. He would later describe that confession as an experience that changed his life. Something became clear to him that day: he felt called to become a priest.

The confessional where that happened is still there. When Richard and I visited, it was roped off, with prayers, photographs, and small mementos left around it by people honoring the significance of what happened there.

I remember standing there and thinking about the young man who walked into that church that day. He couldn't possibly have known where that moment would eventually lead. He simply knew that something had happened to him that he needed to pay attention to.

We often look at someone's life after it has unfolded and connect the dots backward. From where we stand now, that confessional feels like the beginning of a story whose ending we already know.

But he didn't know the ending.

He only knew something had spoken to him deeply enough that he was willing to listen.

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The Spiritual Lesson

I've been thinking about what we mean when we say someone has a "calling."

For Pope Francis, that calling was clearly religious. He understood what happened in that confessional as an encounter with God, and it eventually led him to the priesthood. But standing there, I found myself wondering about the ways calling shows up in the rest of our lives.

Maybe you've felt it yourself. A friend you almost didn't call back. A class you almost didn't sign up for. A city you visited once and never fully left behind.

Sometimes we call it intuition. Sometimes we call it purpose, a knowing, or the voice of the heart. And some of us call it God.

I'm less interested in what we call it than in whether we're willing to listen when it happens.

That's what I kept thinking about as I stood near that confessional. Jorge Bergoglio didn't know where his calling would eventually lead. He only knew what he was being asked to respond to then.

And maybe that's why this connected so deeply for me to what I shared in my last newsletter. In Rio, I was reminded that life can give us something different, and sometimes better, than what we imagined. In Buenos Aires, I began thinking about another possibility.

Sometimes what we didn't imagine isn't simply arriving. It's calling us toward it.

We may not know where that calling will lead, and maybe we're not supposed to know yet.

Birthdays have a way of making us look at the life we’ve already lived while also wondering what may still be calling us forward.

Maybe we don’t need to know exactly where that calling will lead.

Maybe our part is simply to become quiet enough to recognize when something is asking for our attention, and courageous enough to listen.

Your Call to Action

This week, give yourself a little quiet and consider whether there's something in your life that keeps asking for your attention.

It may not feel dramatic or even particularly clear. It may simply be something you keep returning to or a direction that feels meaningful before you know where it leads.

Ask yourself:

What is calling me right now that I may not be fully listening to?

You don't need to turn the answer into a plan. Just notice what comes up.

Sometimes listening is enough to begin.

May you be brave enough to listen, even to the calls that don't come with an ending you can already see.

Abundant Blessings and Namaste.

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Abundant Good News and Notes

One-on-One Coaching: Sometimes a calling doesn’t arrive as a clear answer. It may begin as a quiet sense that something in your life is changing, or that there’s something more you’re being asked to listen to. Much of the work I do with my coaching clients is creating the space to hear that more clearly, trust what’s emerging, and discern what it might mean for how they move forward. If you’re in that kind of place right now, hit reply and let’s talk.

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Thanks for reading ALIGNED!

If you have any questions or want to share what you thought about this newsletter, hit reply and let me know.

Abundant Blessings,
​Joselito Laudencia

Spiritual Life Coach, Teacher, Speaker
Author, The Creative Impulse: Answering the Highest Calling of Your Heart​
​www.abundantgood.com​

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